Podcast Episode Details
Back to Podcast Episodes
The Communism Paradox: Why A Classless Society is Impossible Even in a Post-Scarcity World
In this thought-provoking discussion, Malcolm and Simone Collins explore the fundamental flaws in communist ideology, even in a hypothetical post-scarcity world. They delve into the nature of scarcity, class structures, and the evolution of influence in the digital age. This video challenges common misconceptions about communism and offers insights into how modern society and economics are shaped by attention, competence, and disintermediated communities.
Key topics covered:
* The impossibility of a truly classless society
* Scarcity and status in post-scarcity environments
* The evolution of influencer culture and digital communities
* The role of competence and attention in modern economies
* Critiques of communist ideology and its practical applications
* The future of urban centers and distributed networks
* The importance of family and cultural identity in society
Whether you're interested in political theory, futurism, or the dynamics of online influence, this video offers a fresh perspective on age-old questions and contemporary challenges.
Malcolm Collins: [00:00:00] communism doesn't work even in a post scarcity world. Yes. I, I, I believe UBI might work in a post scarcity world, but even in a world where you have people's universal basic income, where you have people's basic needs taken care of, like you do food drop offs, you do medicine is handled by the state, you do like all of that.
You still have the class structure we have in our existing society, and you will still have some resource which represents some form of scarcity, because there is always scarcity in any system and what people choose to value is always the thing that is scarce, even if that thing is pointless. And what I find really interesting is it's actually the communists themselves in our current society that are most drawn to artificial scarcity.
It is much more the communists who get drawn to brand name recognition, like the Starbucks and the iPads and the et cetera.
Would you like to know more?
Simone Collins: And there is no such thing as a classist society. [00:01:00] It's not possible. No. Um, Do the intro.
Malcolm Collins: Okay. Hello, everyone. I'm excited to be here with you today. Today is going to be, I hope, a Simone Abigail episode because she was the one who made this point to me while we were walking around a Target. What a fitting place.
It's what we do.
Simone Collins: It's what we do. We
Malcolm Collins: were talking about communism and the cliche. Real communism has never been tried, which we will also get to in this video. But one of the things that you turned and said to me while we were walking was, There
Simone Collins: is no such thing as a classless society. It is absolutely impossible.
Go into your argument because I found it very powerful. Yeah. So no matter what happens in a society, there will always be scarce goods. As soon as you make one good, not so good, People will then sort into classes based on what is scarce. And this shows up in various sci fi novels that anyone can read.
I really like stuff by Cory Doctorow. He wrote this one book called Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom, which really [00:02:00] influenced the way that I saw the world in the future. It's, it takes place in a post scarcity environment. You know, post singularity, you can live forever, you have backups of yourself that you can just restore if you accidentally die or are murdered and in this world, you know, you don't need food, you don't need shelter, but There is still a class system and there's still a currency that is, that is limited and finite.
And it's called Woofie. Woofie is social capital in this world. And so people form themselves into what are called adhocracies in this world. Which I love that wor
Published on 1 year, 4 months ago